Three Nights of Obon
by Tuulikki
Summary: It's time for the Bon festival, and Hikaru's mother makes a rather peculiar discovery. Added a little epilogue.
1. First Night

A while ago I wrote a little ficlet called _music_, about Hikaru's mother hearing strange things. I mentioned there it's based on a bigger plotbunny I've got, one that I'd never write. Never say never? I should know by now that most of my plotbunnies will be written, sooner or later... especially if they're weird.

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**Three Nights of Obon: First Night  
**

It was past midnight, the entire world seemed to be void of all sound, and she knew that she too should have been sleeping. Still she was sitting in the living room, listening to the silence, a glass of red wine on the table in front of her. Upstairs, Hikaru was soundly asleep. A little while ago she had checked on him, stood a moment behind his door and listened to his steady breathing. He sounded a little stuffy, she couldn't help noticing. It had been surprisingly chilly at the cemetery, hopefully he hadn't caught a cold.

Mitsuko took a sip of her drink. Normally she didn't do things like this, sit alone in the middle of the night, drinking wine, but she thought that this once she might indulge herself. Masao wasn't home. He was on a business trip, wouldn't return before evening next day – which meant he was missing most of the Bon festival. She didn't really understand business trips that took place on holidays (and on Bon of all holidays!) but Masao had said this was important, something to do with an international deal, and it couldn't be helped.

She really hoped he was home. For once she had tried to argue about it – it was so tiresome, the way he spent more and more time away. But she had to realize that this was important time for his career, and if she just could be patient a little longer, things would work out. Maybe she did, and maybe they would. But she missed talking with him. And they needed to talk – now, not next year.

She shot a worried glance up, toward Hikaru's room. No matter what Masao said ("about time for the boy to start growing up," "aren't you happy he's got a sensible hobby?" or, simply, "he's a teenager," as if that explained everything) she couldn't help feeling that there was something strange in Hikaru's change, something… unnatural, even. Did teenagers really change so suddenly, and in such weird ways? She thought of this pro exam Hikaru was taking, and of Masao's certainty that he wouldn't pass it. She… couldn't be so sure. A year ago, definitely, she would have laughed at the mere idea, but now…

She emptied her glass and on a whim poured herself another. She would regret this in the morning, what with her weak head for alcohol, but right now she felt like she needed it. Deserved, even. She closed her eyes, leaned back, and savored the wine in her mouth, deciding not to think of Hikaru right now. She needed a break.

She might have even fallen asleep there, quite comfortable on the soft armchair and in truth extremely tired, but at some point, drifting somewhere between dream and awake, she realized the silence wasn't quite unbroken anymore. There was quiet music coming from somewhere, a flute playing in the distance, soft notes floating through the quiet of the night. Her eyes fluttered a little, and she rolled her shoulders around taking a more comfortable position, but then, with a shake of her head sat up. This wouldn't do – what would Hikaru think if in the morning he found his mother sleeping on an armchair with a glass of red wine on the table? She'd go to bed. Right now.

She stood up, emptied the glass, and started walking toward the bathroom. Halfway through the living room she stopped and listened. The music was quite beautiful. Traditional – she wondered whether it possibly was a _ryuuteki_ or a _komabue_... or something else. She wasn't quite an expert on flutes. But it was lovely, this music. She thought she should listen more often to traditional music – she did have some CD's, didn't she? She should…

Her eyes, having closed as she stood still in the middle of the living room, listening to the music, snapped suddenly open.

Traditional flute music? In her living room? In the middle of the night?

Where did it _come _from?

She started moving, softly, trying to follow the quiet sound. The music was too clear to be coming from outside. Was Hikaru listening to something? She shook her head. It was not very likely that he'd ever listen to music like this voluntarily.

Just about as likely as him playing go voluntarily, what came to that.

She started climbing the stairs, holding her breath and feeling her heart beating fast and strong, her hands sweating a little. What was this?

The music was louder upstairs, but it still had a distant, ethereal quality to it.

"Hikaru?" she whispered, stopping behind her son's door. "Are you awake?"

There came no answer. Carefully, she placed her hand on the door knob and pushed the door open, peeking inside. The music broke in mid note.

She shot a glance around the dim room. Hikaru was lying on his bed on his stomach, mouth a little open, fast asleep – and yes, he definitely did sound stuffy.

She frowned, confused. Was she imagining things? She started to back off from the room, and at that moment the music started again.

She stopped. Looked over her shoulder. And froze.

She _was _imagining things.

A long while she just stood there, staring at the apparition that was sitting by the window, gazing at the moon while playing the flute. Finally, as if becoming again aware of her, the apparition glanced toward the door, and seeing her still standing there lowered the flute.

The music stopped. She blinked. The apparition blinked.

"Whah…" The sound stuck in her throat. She closed her eyes, as tight as she could, willing her mind to work. When she opened them, the apparition was still there.

A man, at least based on its clothes – Heian age clothes complete with that silly-looking eboshi hat, though no man of _any_age had hair as long as that – holding a flute with long, delicate fingers, and gazing at her with curiosity.

"What. Who. Who are you?" she finally got her voice to work, and noted a panicky edge on it. "_Who are you?!_"

The apparition's eyes widened and it stood up. "Shindou-san? You can… see me?"

"I? See?" Her mind was still struggling. "I don't know what you're talking about! Of course I can see you! Oh god, where did you come from, don't… don't…"

"Shhh!" The apparition raised a finger to its lips. "Please, don't wake Hikaru. He should rest – I'm afraid he's getting sick."

She blinked, glanced at her son. "He does sound…" She shook her head. That wasn't what was important here. "Who are you?" she repeated, more quietly but sternly. "Where did you come from? I swear, if you do anything to my son, I…"

The strange lavender eyes widened again. "I would never do anything to harm Hikaru!" the apparition exclaimed so earnestly that she almost believed it – him? "Never! But I'm sorry, this is bad manners. I really should introduce myself. I am Fujiwara no Sai." He bowed. "As for where I came from… I'm afraid it is quite a long story. In truth, I have been here for a while, together with Hikaru. You see, back in the Heian age, I was the emperor's go instructor, but due to treachery I lost my position, and… and, well, my life. Hikaru has been kind enough to share his consciousness with me – or, I guess he didn't really have a choice, but we do get on quite well nowadays, so there's nothing to worry, Shindou-san, please don't look like that! Hikaru lets me play go with different people now and then, and now that he has a go board we play much together as well – oh, please deliver my thanks to his grandfather! Getting a go board really was a splendid thing! And it has been such a joy to watch Hikaru grow as a player, I have never… Shindou-san? Are you feeling well?"

She wasn't. "I…I think I need one more glass," she muttered holding her head, and stumbled out of the room.

Heian age go instructor? Sharing Hikaru's consciousness? Either she was crazy, or then that man was. She didn't really know which would be worse. Deciding she had cracked – or that there was a madman in the house.

She poured herself a glass of red wine with trembling hands. Maybe she should call the police. But what would she tell them? And what if… what if there really was no one in Hikaru's room? What if she had imagined it all? Maybe it was all because of the alcohol… How embarrassing would that be. The police would come and find nothing but a drunken housewife. They'd wake up Hikaru too… he'd never let her live it down.

And what would Masao say when he'd hear of it…

No. She sipped the drink. She _was _imagining it all. She'd just go to bed, and…

"Shindou-san? Are you feeling better? Should I wake Hikaru?"

She gave such a start she almost dropped the wine glass and a little of the wine spilled – luckily on the table and not on the carpet. The apparition stood in the doorway, staring at her worriedly.

She lowered the glass on the table and dug a handkerchief out of her pocket to carefully wipe the wine away. "N…no. No, please don't… wake Hikaru." What _was _this? She forced herself to look at the…the apparition, ghost, figment of her imagination, whatever it was. "I… I'm fine."

The worried look didn't leave the thing's face. "You don't look fine, Shindou-san. Maybe you should sit down? Or get a glass of water. I'd bring you one but…" He spread his hands smiling apologetically, "I can't really touch anything."

"That… that's too bad." Mitsuko sat gingerly down on the armchair. "You… you can't touch anything? Can you… walk through the walls or something?" As she received a confirming nod, she straightened her back a little. "Show me."

Now, this would call the man's bluff. He'd probably decline, giving one excuse or another, and she'd… she'd somehow fool him, get the phone, and call the police. Once she was certain this man was real, and not an alcohol-induced illusion.

Just as she finished this line of thought, the man walked through their living room table. A very big, very solid table. And he stopped to stand in the middle of it.

Mitsuko stood up slowly. She bent down to peek underneath the table. Yes, the man's feet were there. And the rest of him was above the table. She shook her head, refusing to believe her eyes. The man smiled down at her. "I can stand on it, too," he said, and stepped up so that he stood on the table. "It just takes a bit concentrating. It's not like I could feel it or anything."

"A-ha…" Mitsuko breathed and straightened her back. "So it is me," she muttered.

"What is you?" The man jumped down from the table and gave her a curious look.

"This… all this." She waved her hands exasperatedly. "I'm nuts. Or maybe just more drunk than I thought."

"No… no you're not, Shindou-san, I assure you I'm quite real. I…"

"Why?" she cut him off. "Why do you want me to believe you? If what you're saying is true, you're a ghost haunting my son. You…" She paused. A ghost haunting her son. A _go-playing _ghost haunting her son. On some twisted level, that made frighteningly much sense.

"You know, the first thing I do tomorrow just might be calling a priest to exorcise you," she said softly. A good thing Masao wasn't home, she thought absentmindedly. He'd never agree to such nonsense as exorcism.

"Please don't do that, Shindou-san!" The look on the man's – ghost's – face was so horrified it was almost comical. "I… I haven't yet… I realize that you wouldn't, but… you see I must, must reach the Hand of God and I can't just… just give up, and… and I'm sure Hikaru would be very upset too, I'm not harming him in any way, I promise you I'm not, I just wanted to play more go that's all, and I really don't and you you can't and…"

He was crying. She had a Heian age ghost in her living room, crying so copiously she almost expected a pool to start forming on the floor. "Alright, alright!" she exclaimed, raising her hands. "I won't, calm _down_, I said I won't do it!"

"Oh thank you, thank you, _thank you_," the ghost sobbed, collapsing on the ground into one pile of flowing clothes, drying the tears with the long sleeves. "Thank you so much, Shindou-san."

"You're… welcome," she replied automatically and sat down again. "So…" She tried to think. What was one supposed to do in a situation like this? Perhaps… gather more information? "You said you were… Fujiwara no Sai-san, yes?"

The ghost was nodding, smiling through his tears. "Yes. Just call me Sai. That's what Hikaru does too, and I'm quite used to it."

"Yes. Sai. So… how long have you been around?"

The ghost gathered himself up from the floor and sat down in seiza. "Do you remember that time Hikaru collapsed in his grandfather's attic? I'm afraid that was my fault."

"You were in the _attic_?" Mitsuko was a bit surprised at this.

Sai nodded. "Yes. There is this… old go board there. I was captured in it, and Hikaru found me."

"I see." Mitsuko bit her lip thoughtfully. There really was quite lot of old stuff gathering dust in that attic. So far, the story made sense. "You're the reason Hikaru suddenly got interested in go?"

"Partly, at least." There was a small, enigmatic smile on Sai's lips. "There is also this boy, Touya Akira, an avid go player of Hikaru's age… I think he might have had just as much to do with it as me. If not more."

"Hmm." She didn't quite know what to make of that. "Hikaru seems to be pretty good in go… or so they say. Say, have you ever… I mean, all those games he's played, and now, in the exam… have you…"

"Have I ever played as him? Of course there are times when he makes the moves but I'm the one really playing… but not ever when it really counts. Or… I did offer once, at the insei test, but… he was so concentrated that he didn't even hear me." He smiled again, and Mitsuko couldn't help thinking what a sunny smile he had. Were ghosts supposed to be somehow so… animated? "Your son isn't just good, he has great skill and potential to turn into one of the best players in the country – if not the world. …don't tell him I said that, though. He'd be insufferable."

"I can imagine," Mitsuko snorted. She fell silent for a moment. "So… you think… he might pass this… this pro exam thing?"

Sai smiled. "Definitely."

"Oh. Oh my." Mitsuko picked up her wine again and took such a big gulp it almost made her cough. "I don't understand anything anymore," she muttered. "He's just fourteen… he has no business turning pro on anything… what about school, and… and…" Her voice drifted off and she just sat there, staring at her drink.

"I'm afraid Hikaru isn't very interested in pursuing other education in the case he passes," Sai said carefully. "But you shouldn't worry too much, Shindou-san. He is perfectly capable of making himself a good living in the world of go."

"In the world of go," Mitsuko parroted his words. "What a peculiar world that must be! I don't know." She shook her head. "Maybe it is alright – _if_ he really is as good as you say, and if it is what _he _really wants." She shot a significant look at the ghost sitting on the floor.

Sai just smiled a little, once again. "It is what he wants. Talk with him tomorrow – I know he's at that age where he doesn't want to chat about his life with his parents, but I'll try to make him understand that when he is facing such big chances in his life he shouldn't keep them from you."

Mitsuko looked at him long and hard in silence. "Whenever I talk with my son," she said slowly, "you are there. Aren't you?"

The smile on Sai's face turned a little uncomfortable. "Well, yes. I… try to give him privacy, but… it is rather hard. So far it hasn't been a problem, but…" He left the sentence hanging for a while. "It might work out," he muttered then so quietly he might have been just thinking aloud. "It did with Torajiro…"

"What?" Mitsuko asked, confused, and he waved quickly the question aside, smiling apologetically.

"Nothing, nothing… just… remembering past things."

The silence that followed was long and rather awkward. Mitsuko closed her eyes and leaning back on the chair rubbed her temples. She had wanted to talk about Hikaru, to understand what was happening to him, and now she had gotten her wish. It just didn't make her any less worried.

Maybe this was just a hallucination. In fact, that was the only sensible explanation. But maybe… _maybe_ she still should call that priest in the morning, even if she'd said she wouldn't. Just in case.

She opened her eyes and looked down at the ghost. He still sat on the floor, seemingly quite comfortable with the seiza position (could a ghost's legs get numb, she idly wondered), and she had to admit he didn't feel at all dangerous or menacing. On the contrary, there was something peaceful, even kind about him. And he was beautiful, more so than any man she had ever seen. Her eyes traveled down from his face to his hands and slender fingers which were now holding a fan instead of a flute, and she wondered if a ghost's touch would really be so very cold. His hands didn't look cold. In fact, she liked the way they looked. Very different from Masao's big and clumsy hands. She couldn't help wondering what his hands would feel like, if his fingers were really as nimble as they seemed…

She blinked and felt herself blush a little. How could she be thinking such things about a strange man, in a situation like this? And this wasn't even a man she was thinking about, she reminded herself, but a ghost. A _ghost_. Haunting her son. No matter what its intentions were, being attached to something otherworldly couldn't be good for Hikaru. She knew the old stories. Ghosts were, at bottom, a selfish lot, only interested in what ever reason they had for staying behind. How would Hikaru ever truly live his own life, if he had a ghost tagging along?

"You are a good mother," the ghost suddenly said softly, as if knowing what she had been thinking about, and she gave a start, blush deepening.

"Wha… what?"

"You're good mother, a good wife. You really care about your son. I wish Hikaru would appreciate all you do more. And the same goes for…" He frowned and cut himself of. "It isn't really my place to talk about that. But Hikaru, he is just so young… I'm sure he'll understand when he grows older."

"Mmm, thank you… I guess." She leaned forward to pick up her glass from the table. As she watched the dark liquid rolling in it, a strange sound escaped her, something close to a giggle. God. She must really be drunk. "And Masao, then?" she heard herself saying aloud. "I wonder how old _he _would have to grow…"

She thought about her husband and didn't feel like laughing anymore. Late nights away from home. Long business trips. Never a word of thanks for keeping the house clean and tidy. Of course, it wasn't for his thanks she did it, and in the early days of their marriage she hadn't even thought of such things. Thanks hadn't been needed for her to feel herself appreciated. Loved.

She didn't know when it had changed. But somehow the years, the endless routine, had destroyed the closeness they'd once had. Maybe it was partly her fault. Maybe she should have seen it coming, tried to do something to bring them together again instead of stepping aside quietly, dutifully, leaving him to read the newspaper in peace or take his long showers alone. She had wandered through the house, taking care of her daily tasks lost in her own world, and when she finally woke up, it was too late. One day she suddenly realized they never talked anymore, except of Hikaru's falling grades, or maybe of the bills coming due, or possibly even a word or two about the weather. At times she almost wished he had another, so she'd have someone else to blame but herself…

She frowned down at her drink, stopped that line of thought. The ghost was quiet, and for a moment she had completely forgotten about him. Looking up at him she wondered if he had actually just criticized her husband with what he'd said, and if that was something she should be listening to in her own home. She certainly shouldn't be agreeing with statements like that.

"My husband and me," she said very carefully, "we have a functional relationship. He brings in the money, I take care of the house and our child. And even if we don't talk about it, we both respect each other and the work we do for our common home. We… we…" Suddenly, in the middle of her solemn speech, she almost giggled again. She brought her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes, trying to keep it in, but she couldn't help it. It had struck her just how laughable the whole situation was. There she sat, alone in an empty room, defending her marriage to… what? Some kind of a phantom image that just _had _to be conjured up by her tired, intoxicated mind. She giggled again, and for a moment shook with barely contained laughter.

When she looked up, the phantom was still there, watching her with a slightly worried frown, as if wondering what was the matter with her. When she looked into his eyes, her mirth left her. Suddenly she felt cold, and extremely tired. Phantom image or no, he knew the truth as well as she did. "Does Hikaru…"

"No." The ghost shook his head, guessing what she had been going to ask. "He doesn't have a clue. He's not very… observant, you know."

She gave a relieved sigh. "Well, he doesn't need to know. I'm sure we can still patch up things. It's not that bad."

She fell silent, realizing how defensive she sounded. "I'm just tired," she muttered, stood up, and walked to the kitchen with her wine glass. There she poured the rest of the wine into the sink and got herself a big glass of water. "I should go to bed," she stated, but sat instead down by the kitchen table.

The ghost followed her in. "You really should, Shindou-san," he agreed. "You look exhausted."

"Hmm. Not very flattering." She gulped down the rest of her water and leaning her elbows against the table gave the ghost a long, wondering look. "…can a ghost feel tired?"

"Sometimes." Sai smiled again, and once again she was captured by that smile, and the way it reached his eyes – eyes of such a peculiar color it couldn't possibly be real… or did people at the Heian age have different eye colors from today? She remembered reading somewhere that blue eyes were gradually becoming less common in the world… maybe the same had happened to lavender?

She realized she hadn't been listening to what he said. Something about Hikaru making him tired? That she found easy to believe. Staying with Hikaru every moment must be really exhausting. No matter how much she loved her son, she almost felt sorry for this ghost. He really couldn't have committed great enough sins in his life to deserve such a fate.

She said as much aloud. Sai laughed, and covered his mouth with his fan.

"I used to think so, too," he said. He sat down on the chair opposite to her – in fact, walked through the chair to sit on it. "When we first met… I couldn't understand why I was attached to him. Now, it couldn't be clearer."

She smiled, now half-lying on the table as she watched him. "It's clear to you? That's nice. I don't have a clue what's going on. Actually…" Her head tilted a little, eyes focused on nothing. "I think I'm probably dreaming," she said slowly. "Yeah, that's it. Must be. I'm dreaming. I'm asleep on that armchair."

A shadow of a smile was playing on his lips. "You could always pinch yourself to find out."

She thought about it. Shook her head. "Nah. I don't wanna… I don't _want to_," she corrected herself. "This is a funny dream. And it's nice to be talking with someone. I haven't really… talked with anyone lately. Much. At all. Even if this is basically just talking with myself… it's kind of nice."

"I know what you mean." Sai sighed. "I have only Hikaru to talk with, and though we do discuss go much these days, there are times when… when we're not quite on the same wavelength, as Hikaru puts it. …what _is_ a wavelength anyway?" He looked at her quizzically. "The length of a wave? How can you be _on _it?"

She barked out a short laugh at his expression. "It's just some… physics stuff. Never mind." Resting her head against her arms she gave him a thoughtful look. "A Heian age noble and my son. I can imagine you wouldn't have much in common." She snorted. "I'm surprised you have _anything _in common."

"We do…" Sai started to say, but she wasn't listening.

"It must have been, what, about one millennium since you were alive, right? I doubt there's anything _that _old in that attic… how did you end up there?"

"There was a child," he said quietly, "at Innoshima. He… was the first to find me. And when he died, I ended up in his go board."

"Hmm." She was quiet a moment before what he'd said really registered. She frowned. "You mean that during those thousand years, you've been out just once? What do you _do _in those go boards? Are you awake?"

He hesitated a moment, as if looking for words. "Not quite… awake, but not sleeping, either. It's… a different kind of existence. But… rather boring, in its own way."

She said nothing for a long while, wondering what would happen to her when she died. Would she stay behind? Doing what? Haunting the corners of this home of theirs, forever dusting, washing dishes, calling for Hikaru to get up or he'd be late…

She hoped not.

"Do you miss being alive?" she asked quietly.

"Sometimes," he muttered. "I miss… all the senses I no longer have. The smell of fresh air after a rain shower, the taste of a cold drink on a hot day… and above all, touching. Holding a perfectly smooth go stone in my hands… or a friend's hand. I'm not sure if I even remember anymore quite what it was like. To smell, and taste, and touch…"

He was watching his hands with a tiny frown on his face, something so sad in his whole being that it wrenched her heart.

"I can touch," she whispered. "And be touched… but somehow… it seems to me that… that I…" She swallowed. "When did I really touch someone last time?"

Hikaru was not of an age where he wanted to be hugged and held by his mother, slipping always out of her reach, like an eel. And it was complete waste of breath to even mention Masao. Even when they touched, they didn't really… touch. Connect.

Now she too was staring at her hands. She raised her gaze a little to his hands that were – seemingly – resting on the table. What would it be like, she wondered, to spend a millennium unable to touch? Would she be still sane?

Unthinking, she reached out her hand and placed it on his.

She froze. It's not cold, was all she could think at first. Not cold at all. On the contrary, warm and soft and just like she had imagined it to be. She looked up, slowly, and saw Sai staring at their hands, face so pale he easily passed for a ghost. He too looked up and met her gaze, eyes wide.

"I…" he breathed, and she pulled her hand back.

"I thought you were supposed to be incorporeal," she said. He didn't reply, just stared at his hands with a stunned expression as if he'd never seen them before. He pushed his hand against the table, and slowly it sank into the wood. He moved it back and forth, and didn't seem to find any resistance in the table. She watched, fascinated. How peculiar.

When he reached out and grasped her hand again, she let him examine it, turn it around in his hands, stroke the little scar she still had on her right hand as a memory of wild childhood, feel the slight calluses on her palms… A little embarrassed she noted that his hands were much better taken care of than hers. The only thing that stood out was the short, worn out nail of his right index finger – the sign of a go player, she knew that much nowadays.

"Umm," she uttered, and suddenly he seemed to remember himself and let go off her.

"I… I'm sorry, Shindou-san, I… just…" There was light color spreading across his cheeks. She stared at him in fascination, watching how it deepened.

"I've been meaning to say," she stated a little absentmindedly, musing over the concept of a blushing ghost (there was no blood in his veins, right? There were no veins to begin with. So how could he blush?), "if I call you Sai, you should call me Mitsuko."

As if suddenly coming aware of his blush, he hid behind his fan. "I'm… not sure if that's…"

She stood up suddenly and pushed the fan aside. "Why not?" Their eyes met, and for a moment she was again lost in that lavender, forgetting what she had been going to say. "I… I don't know what's happening," she muttered. "And I don't care. I'll… think about it tomorrow."

And deciding to check out something else she had been wondering about, she leaned across the table and placed a kiss on his mouth.

Nothing happened. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting – but somehow she felt _something_ should happen when you kiss a ghost. At the very least she should have felt something, something peculiar, a tingling down her spine, perhaps a cold breath from the other side, or, or… well, she _did _feel something, and maybe there had been some kind of a shiver down her spine, but there was nothing otherworldly in that sensation, in truth, it was rather enjoyable, and…

"Mitsuko-san."

She looked up with a blink, still leaning awkwardly across the table. Sai had stood up, and he was holding out a hand for her, watching her with a strange (gentle? A little amused?) expression.

"I think it's time for you to go to sleep," he said softly, and Mitsuko nodded slowly, compliantly, and let herself be led to bed. She lay down without undressing, dimly thinking something about having to brush her teeth, but the pillow was so soft beneath her head, and there was this pretty young man sitting on her bedside, tenderly wiping her hair away from her eyes, and her heavy lids closed on their own and she drifted away, a small smile playing on her lips as she fell asleep.

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**A/N:** I do plan to continue this... some day.


	2. Second Night

You know... I just started to wonder... if the Bon festival lasts for three _days_, how many _nights _are there? But, overall, it doesn't matter. My first night here was the one that started after the first day of the festival.

And another thing I realized: although Bon apparently most commonly takes place in August (when it would coincide with the pro test) of course Kanto area (including Tokyo) has to be different and have Bon in July. Which means that the pro test isn't yet on. Now, they might (or might not) already have had the prelims, though, so I just decided that that's the case. Whatever. Who cares, really? (Except me...)

Anyway, without further ado, here's the next part.

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**Second Night**

Mitsuko had the radio on as she prepared the supper. She didn't usually listen to it, and she wasn't really listening to it now, either; it was merely a background noise, to cover all other possible – or impossible – noises. A distraction.

As she had feared, Hikaru had got sick. He had woken up with a fever which had thankfully gone down a little during the day, but he was still quite drowsy, had a sore throat, and spent his time in bed using up a great amount of tissues.

Masao had called in the morning. There had been a delay. He wasn't sure when he'd get home, but most likely it'd be late on the next day. Somehow she hadn't been surprised. She hadn't even bothered to get angry about it – and, in truth, she wasn't, really… if anything she was weirdly thankful he didn't come home quite yet. She needed some time alone, to think.

She stood by the oven, stirring the soup in slow, methodical movements. Now, Masao's parents – _they_ would be angry at their son, as most likely he would miss their family dinner next day. They would certainly take care of reproaching him the way only parents could, no need for her to bother about it. She hoped Hikaru would be well enough that she and he at least could go to visit them. She knew that Heihachi yearned to have yet another game of go with his prodigal grandson. He still, stubbornly, refused to have any handicap stones, though.

Prodigal grandson. Her hand stopped its movement and a moment she stood still. How strange the world had turned. Hikaru, a prodigy? A haunted one? She didn't know which sounded more ridiculous. But thinking about the theoretical ghost (she still didn't know whether to believe it or not) and Hikaru's grandparents, she suddenly remembered that the ghost had claimed to have come from an old go board in their shed. Maybe she should ask Heihachi about it, if he knew anything about a curse or such connected to that go board. Or, if she was to talk about such things with him, maybe she could also ask him if he knew anything about ghosts. Go-playing ghosts.

She tasted the soup absentmindedly, and almost burned her tongue. Well, at least the taste was fine. And warm soup would be good for Hikaru. It could still cook for a moment, though. She started to set the table, but came then to wonder whether she should rather take Hikaru's meal to his room. She was just about to shout to him and ask if he felt like coming down to eat, when a loud crash came from upstairs, followed by mumbled yelling.

_ "…sick of…! Can't you ever… you!" _

"Hikaru?" She laid the dishes down and ran to the stairs. "What are you doing?"

Silence fell as she reached his door, and she stopped, hesitating a moment before pushing it open. She stepped in, blatantly ignoring the silly butterflies fluttering around in her stomach.

Hikaru was sitting on the floor, in front of his goban, looking quite flushed. There were go stones spread all across the floor. It looked like he had thrown one of the bowls to the wall.

"Hikaru! What are you doing!?" she repeated her question. "You shouldn't be up and playing! And _why _did you make such a mess…" She shook her head as she looked at the stones lying here and there.

Hikaru just shrugged. "I'm tired of losing," he snapped angrily, and she shot a look at him.

"Losing? What do you mean? Weren't you playing against yourself?"

"Just replaying one old game I lost." Hikaru scrambled up from the floor. "Stupid game," he muttered as he crawled into his bed and drew the blankets over himself.

Mitsuko stared at him a moment, but picked then up the bowl and started to collect the go stones from the floor.

"Say, eh…" she attempted after a moment's silence, but didn't know how to go on. Crawling there on the floor she felt suddenly very awkward and self-conscious, and totally at a loss of words. The whole day she had been planning to ask Hikaru if what she had experienced last night was real or just a dream, but simply couldn't find a way to do it. _I had such a strange dream last night. You were haunted in it. That wouldn't actually be true, would it?_Simple enough, but awfully hard to get out of her mouth.

In fact, she wondered if she hesitated simply because she was afraid of what the reply would be. Though could she even say for certain which it was she feared: his denial or admittance… no. That wasn't quite true. Maybe, she pondered, picking up a black stone and turning it around in her hands, maybe if she was totally honest, she didn't want to ask because she knew. She knew what she wished for, and was afraid it'd be a fool's dream.

"Hikaru," she said suddenly, turning to look at her son. "I've noticed that you talk to yourself quite much these days. And yell, too; sometimes it sounds like you're having a fight with yourself. What's it all about?"

Hikaru was an unmoving lump on his bed, his back to her, and just a little bit of black and yellow hair was visible from underneath the blanket. Then the lump twitched a little.

"So what? Is it a crime to talk to yourself?"

"No, no, of course not…" She dropped the stones in her hand into the bowl. "I was merely wondering if you were in fact talking to someone, you know, someone else than yourself…"

"Well, _I _don't know." He sounded curt. "That's nonsense."

She opened her mouth to try again, but he cut her off. "Isn't the supper ready soon? I'm hungry."

"Supp…" She bounced to her feet. "I forgot the soup!"

"I wanna eat in my room!" Hikaru yelled after her as she rushed to save what could be saved.

And so the evening passed, and she didn't voice her questions. Hikaru went back to bed after supper, and when she checked on him, he was fast asleep. She stood in the doorway and her gaze swept across the room, but there was no sign of anyone else there, Heian age or not. No sound of flute, reaching her ears as if from somewhere far away… She returned to the kitchen, washed the dishes, wondered briefly if she should make a goodnight call to Masao, but figured then he'd call her if he was in a place where he could talk in the phone. She wandered into the living room, turned on the TV, and after briefly surfing through the channels turned it off again and picked up her book instead. Half an hour passed, and she had read two pages – pages she would have to read again later, because she wasn't quite sure what had happened in them.

She thought about going to bed, but knew it would be pointless; she wouldn't be able to fall asleep anyway. Besides, it was too early to go to sleep yet.

When would a ghost appear if it were to appear? Sundown was long past. Midnight? Maybe. There was still time to that, though.

Making up her mind she got up and left her book on the sofa. She needed something to distract herself. _If _the ghost were to appear, this time it wouldn't catch her unprepared.

Briefly she wished they'd had a computer – she knew that one could find almost anything on the internet. But lacking that, they did have a wide and comprehensive library, including quite a many books about history of Japan. She took out the volume that handled Heian age, and to her dismay realized she should dust the books more often. Blowing the dust away she sat down with the book. First she checked the name index. Fujiwara no… Michinaga, Michitaka, Morosuke, Naritoki, Nobunori, Nobutsuna, Norimichi, Sadako, Sukefuse, Suketada, Tadamichi… No Sai. Well, that would have been a little too easy. But she had thought that if someone was posing as a historical character, most likely they'd choose someone famous.

Sai. A peculiar name. She read through the list again, and shook her head. Sai. It just didn't fit, so completely different from all the other names. Maybe it wasn't his real name. She thought of Sei Shonagon, one of the Heian period's famous authors. That wasn't her real name, either – Sei was apparently based on her clan name, Kiyohara, if she remembered right. She wasn't quite sure, but she thought that it was common in the Heian age to refer to people by their titles. Shonagon, Shikibu… was Sai a title? But he used it as a given name…

She shook her head again. That line wasn't taking her anywhere. She checked _go_ instead. There wasn't much about the game in the book, though, just a mention that it had been introduced from China in the Nara period. Nothing about emperors' go tutors. Sighing, she leafed through the index, and then the word _ghosts_ caught her eye. She struck that part open. _The world of Heian was heavily populated by goblins, demons, spirits, and other supernatural beings… foxes… the Demon of Rashomon…_legends she was well familiar with. Then: _The unappeased spirits of dead people haunted the world of the living and were a prime cause of illness, death, and other disasters. _

She read on, but found nothing she wouldn't have known before. Also, there was nothing to indicate that ghosts could have ever been seen as anything else than harbingers of misfortune. She paused to think, and took then out a piece of paper and a pen. First she wrote _name_ on it, adding a big question mark, and then _reason for staying here? _She tried to recall the previous night. What had the ghost said back when she had threatened to call a priest to exorcise it (oh, and that wasn't, maybe, such a bad idea?) Something about not having reached the hand of god? Hand of god? She checked the index, but found nothing. Could it be something religious? Maybe she had misunderstood and it was the other way round, the hand of god hadn't reached him, to take him… wherever dead people went. Or… thinking about his enthusiasm about go, maybe it had something to do with the game. She made a note of it, too, planning to check Hikaru's go books later.

Bent over the book, it took her a while to realize she wasn't alone anymore. Someone stood behind her back, reading over her shoulder. With a start she snapped the book shut and turned to look.

He looked exactly like she remembered. She had thought that certainly alcohol had to have had some kind of an effect on her memory, but no; the eyes were the exact shade of violet she had recalled, the impossibly long hair just as shining, and the smile… she closed her eyes and told her heart to slow down.

"Evening, Shindou-san," he said, and there was smile in his voice, too. "I'm so happy you can still see me, after all."

"Yes, I…" She cleared her throat. "I didn't see you before. Were you there?"

"In Hikaru's room?" He nodded. Suddenly his expression turned worried, eyes clouded over. "I'm so sorry about earlier, I know I shouldn't have played with him when he's sick, but we were both so bored and I thought one little game wouldn't hurt, though maybe I _should _have gone easy on him, just this once, but…"

"So it _was _you he was playing with," Mitsuko cut him off. "I thought so. Say, why didn't you tell him we met last night?"

He watched her thoughtfully a long while. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "I just… I thought about it, but… I'm not sure how he would have reacted, and now that he's sick, too…" He fell silent. "No," he went then on, "I didn't tell him because I didn't want to. I'm not sure why I didn't want to, though. But you didn't tell him either."

"No." She shook her head. "I was going to… ask him if it's true, but… somehow I just couldn't."

A little smile played on his lips. "It might be for the best. As I said, who knows how he'd react."

"Yeah." She gave a little laugh, too, feeling strangely coy. She wanted to reach out and check if she still could touch him, but managed to restrain herself.

Had she really kissed him last night? She wasn't sure, but she hoped not. Maybe. Actually she wasn't quite sure about that either.

She didn't have to reach for him; he reached for her. His hand touched softly her cheek, very lightly so that she barely felt it, and only for the shortest moment.

"Sorry," he said, letting his hand fall back. She noted idly that it went straight through the back of her chair. "I just wanted to… check, if I… still… you know."

She knew.

"You were reading about the Heian age," Sai said after a while as she said nothing.

She shrugged. "Yes. I was… just a little curious." She placed the book on the table, covering her notes with it so that he wouldn't be able to read them, unless he already had. She wondered how long he'd been there, and if he had possibly seen the part about ghosts. _Prime cause of illness, death, and other disasters_…She hoped not. Looking at him, that superstition didn't seem fair.

She sat still, the ghost behind her back, and for a moment didn't know what to say. The notes being covered, she couldn't read them either… but she hadn't had time to write that much, had she?

"Your name," she said suddenly. "How do you write it?"

"'Sa' is as in assist or help, and 'i' as in benefit or sake."

"I see." Her fingers twitched, wanting to take a pen and write it down. "It doesn't seem like a very… Heian name, to me."

"It was rather unusual, though there have been others with that name." Again she heard the smile in his voice. "You can blame it on my mother. Father let her to decide."

"Mmm." She was already thinking about her next question – and all the other questions it brought to her mind – and wondering how to tactfully voice them. He had come to stand in front of her, and she smiled at him a little absentmindedly. "Please, sit down," she said, and instead of the armchair he sat again on the floor in seiza.

"Is there something you would like to ask, Shindou-san?" he said giving her a look that was half amused, half knowing.

"There's a lot I'd like to ask," she replied, not really facing him. "For one thing, why are you here? What is it you want?"

"Play go…" he said softly. "To develop, and improve, as a go player, and one day, maybe…"

"Yes?"

"Reach the hand of god."

"And what is that?"

He gave a little laugh. "Good question. I wonder if any two go players would really agree – even if it is everyone's goal. The perfect move, some would say, as other simply call it a truly inspired and original move… One knows only for sure once one has played it."

"Has anyone ever?"

He smiled again, this time a little smugly. "I was very close once. It's still considered the best example of what the hand of god might be like."

"Oh." She bit her lip. "You must be really good, then."

The smile was hardly just a little smug anymore. "I'd like to think so."

She tried to gather her thoughts. "Ok. So. You're here to play go." Somehow, to her, playing go didn't quite sound like an adequate reason to become a ghost, but then again, what did she know. "Play go. Yes. Umm…"

"Yes?"

"I was just wondering… if you don't mind me asking, exactly how did you die?"

There was no trace left of the smile on his face. "It's a long story… shortly put, the emperor had another go tutor who challenged me to a game over the position. He cheated during that game, and I was the only one to notice. Just when I was about to call him out, he claimed that _I _had done what he did, and I… I lost my composure. I couldn't manage to win after that, though I definitely should have… So I lost my position, and together with it, my reputation. I was banished from the court… and I couldn't face it, the life in the provinces, away from all the great go players…

"So I drowned myself."

They sat in silence as she thought it through and through. "You were… banished for cheating in a game?" she finally asked, a little incredulously.

His smile was a strange combination of bitter and amused. "If you ask me, that is definitely a strong enough reason for banishment. But of course… no, it wasn't just that. It was all about politics. I was so young when I entered the court, young and naïve. Too outspoken. I made the wrong enemies, and the wrong friends, and…" He shook his head. "That was the only way it could end."

She tried to imagine this serene, beautiful, so kind-looking young man wading into a river to end his life, and couldn't. "That's awful," she whispered, voice hoarse. "Awful."

"I guess. I… have had a long time to think about it," he said at her questioning look. "Now I think it was mainly stupid."

She didn't know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

Now she had replies to all the questions she had had time to think of. She wished she had started preparing for this earlier. Made up a plan, or something. She didn't want to feel this lost.

"Shindou-san," the ghost started to say.

"I told you to call me Mitsuko, didn't I?" she cut him off. "If I'm to call you Sai…"

"Of course." He smiled a little. "Mitsuko. You seem… worried?"

"Not really…." She moved uncomfortably. "Not really worried. I just… This is so weird."

"I know. But I want to thank you, Shin… Mitsuko. Not everyone would be so understanding about something like this."

Oh. Was she understanding? She blushed a little. Hadn't she just a while ago been thinking that maybe calling a priest wouldn't be a bad idea after all? Now she couldn't believe it. This ghost definitely was the exception that proved the rule. They weren't _all _just heralds of death and misery. She refused to believe that, whatever the books said.

As she remained quiet the silence prolonged, and she tried fervently to come up with something to say. What would be appropriately Heian topics? Poetry, music – his flute playing, maybe – some other beautiful things…

No, no. She shook her head, tried to collect her thoughts. She wasn't even drunk at all this night, why couldn't she concentrate on what was important.

"How long will you stay with Hikaru? All his life?"

"Probably," Sai admitted quietly. "I did stay with Torajiro to his death, after all."

"Torajiro?" Hadn't he mentioned someone named like that before? "Who is he?"

"My previous… host, you could say. I stayed with him some 150 years ago. You might know him by the name Shuusaku. Though I was the one who played those games…"

There was that smuggish smile again, though this time it was a little sad. Shuusaku? It sounded familiar, probably someone she should know. She tried to keep the fact that she didn't quite recognize the name from her face.

"I see. Did you spend a long time with him?"

"He was but a boy when we met, but… he died much too early. No, not because of me, I swear – it was the cholera epidemic. He was a good man, trying to help others… and in the end paid for it with his own life."

"I'm sorry," Mitsuko said quietly. He seemed sincerely sad.

Sai shook his head softly. "It was a long time ago… by now he would be dead anyway. But…"

Whatever he had been going to say, he left unvoiced. Mitsuko cleared her throat self-consciously.

"I still don't know what to think about this," she said, deciding to change the subject. "But I… I think for now, I will let things lie. I'll be keeping an eye on Hikaru, though." She nailed what she hoped to be a stern and warning look at the ghost. "If I have the slightest reason to believe you are harmful for him in any way, you are _gone_."

Sai nodded solemnly. "I understand. And you do not need to worry. I would never harm Hikaru in any way."

"Good." She relaxed a little, believing him, though she didn't know why.

Silence took over again. She was beginning to feel a little awkward sitting up on her chair, watching down on him. On a spur of a moment she moved down to the floor too, sitting also in seiza.

"I really should do this more often," she said at Sai's surprised look. "It is so seldom these days one needs to sit in seiza, that when the need comes it is much more painful than it needs to be. Besides, I felt silly sitting up there, almost like you were kneeling in front me."

Sai smiled a little. "Of course, there is no need for you to sitting with me at all. It is very kind of you to spend time with me."

She didn't know what to say. "I couldn't just ignore you, could I? That would be weird." She moved a little, searching a more comfortable position. "And I am not going to sleep yet, so… it is nice to spend the evening with someone." She paused a moment to wonder what she had just said. She really had to be desperate for company, if, meeting a ghost in her living room, she was just happy she didn't have to be alone. "Is there something you'd like to do?" she asked, pushing the thought away.

Sai looked surprised for a moment. "Play go?" he said then in a hopeful one, and Mitsuko gave out a little laugh.

"I really don't play go at all," she admitted. "Maybe you'd like to do something you normally don't? Would you like to go out?"

"I'm not sure if it's a good idea," Sai said shaking his head. "I'd rather not go far from Hikaru – if he wakes up and I'm gone, he might get frightened. Besides, I can go out with him. Actually…" he looked at her with a smile, "what we're currently doing is something I don't normally do. Talking with someone. Someone else than Hikaru, that is."

"Well, what do you want to talk about, then?" She moved her toes again. Her legs couldn't be getting numb yet, could they?

Sai paused. A long while he sat still, staring ahead, and a moment Mitsuko wondered if he had entered some kind of a trance. She was about to repeat her question, when he shook his head softly.

"How peculiar," he said quietly. "During this past millennium, how often I wished I had someone to talk to, and now… I don't know what I want to talk about. That is, if we are not going to discuss go…"

"How about… your life? If it's not too… too painful or anything. What was it like in the Heian age?"

He smiled, looking a little relieved, perhaps happy she had given him a topic. "Very different from this age… life was slower, simpler, people had time to appreciate the beauty of the world around them much more deeply than it is possible nowadays. The days went by without tight schedules – except for the occasional rituals and ceremonies, of course."

"Mmm. I remember reading somewhere it could have been quite a boring life for women, though. Shut behind their screens, with but a few ways to pass time…"

"I guess…" Sai frowned. "I've never really thought about it." He paused for a moment. "You're probably right. I guess it could have been quite a monotonous existence, at least for those who didn't go to court. And I'm not saying life had been perfect then – for one thing, I'd give much if I could taste your cooking. Our time was quite lacking in the culinary… And the health problems people had… I could almost count myself lucky having escaped them."

"Well, I guess I'm happy to live in this age," Mitsuko stated. She might have been bored with her life, at times, but at least she could walk out of the house when she wanted, and talk with who she wanted. Not that she did that often. She frowned a little, wondering when she had raised this screen of her own between herself and the world. "Our world is hardly perfect either, though," she went on, attempting to keep her tone light. "But I'm surely thankful for the free health care. I'm getting close to forty and I still have all my teeth!"

"I have often wondered how healthy your elderly are. Like Hikaru's grandfather! And people live to such an old age…"

"Yes…" Mitsuko wasn't really listening to him. Her mind had wandered back to the Heian age, and she realized how very little she in the end new about it. She thought of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book which she had read a long, long time ago. _Sei's _life hadn't seemed that boring to her.

"You know, thinking about the old times does have a certain kind of… I don't know, romantic feel about it," she said a little dreamily, and blushed then. What a silly notion, as if she were just a teenage girl.

Her feet _were_ falling asleep. She stood up, not giving Sai time to reply anything. "I'll… have a glass of water. Do you…" She had been about to ask if he wanted anything, but caught herself in time. "I'll have a glass of water," she repeated a little weakly, and headed to the kitchen.

She got herself a glass of cold, cold water, and drank it slowly. Almost she sat down by the kitchen table, but then she suddenly remembered how last night she had as well went for a glass of water, and then, sitting by that table, had reached over it to… to _check something_, and the memory made her turn abruptly away from the table (sitting on the floor might actually be preferable), only to find herself face to face with a rather startled Sai.

"Mitsuko-san…" the ghost said carefully, taking a step back, as she fluttered, leaning against the table, probably bright red once again. "Somehow it seems to me that… you're not… quite relaxed in my company."

She gave a short, nervous laugh. Aren't you observant, she though, and luckily managed to keep herself from saying it aloud. Instead she turned to get herself more water, to win some time while she drank it.

"I'm sorry," Sai said quietly behind her back. "Perhaps it is better if I go back to Hikaru's room? Maybe you _should_ just ignore me, if you can… I wouldn't want to make you feel awkward in your son's company. But… I _really _wouldn't want you to have me exorcised either, so…"

He fell silent. Mitsuko placed her glass in the kitchen sink, and leaned against it. Even without looking she could imagine the troubled expression on the ghost's face. She couldn't help laughing a little.

"Yes, we have the makings of something really awkward here, don't we?" She turned to look at him, and saw that the troubled look was much more miserable than she had guessed. It made him look so young. Could this really be a thousand-year-old spirit?

"_I _am sorry," she said with a reassuring smile. "I am behaving quite foolishly, aren't I? Why don't we go back to the living room. I'd like to hear more about the Heian age, if it's alright for you."

He returned the smile, relieved. In the living room she sat again on the floor, leaning against the sofa – so much for the seiza, but at least she'd sit on the same level with him. He settled down too, and they talked long, long into the night – it wasn't just he talking about his life a thousand years ago, or the time he had spent with Torajiro, but Mitsuko too found herself telling him about her childhood and youth, and about Hikaru's early years.

The horizon was already beginning to turn lighter when she finally fell asleep, still leaning against the sofa. Sai watched her a long while, wondering if he should wake her up so that she could sleep in her bed, but she did not seem to be uncomfortable, the way she perched against the seat.

There was a shawl on the back of the sofa, and he would have liked to spread it over her, if… if he only could. He looked down at his hands. When he had come to her this night, touched her cheek, he could have swore she had felt more… warm, _real_, than in the previous night. And when his hand had fallen down through the chair, it had… tingled, hadn't it? He stood up and tried to pick up the shawl, but his hand passed right through it. Still, it did not feel the way it usually did – or, to be more precise, he could feel something, as opposed to nothing. Closing his eyes, concentrating as hard as he could, he attempted again to pick it up, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not grasp the shawl.

But when he opened his eyes, he saw it had dropped down from the sofa's back and was lying on the seat. A moment he stared at it in stunned disbelief. Then he reached out again, and slowly, painfully slowly, although he couldn't really feel the cloth, it moved across the sofa until he managed to spread it over the sleeping woman.

Still a moment he spent watching her sleep, and when the first rays of the morning sun entered the room, he turned away and returned to Hikaru's room.

* * *

**A/N: **I've no clue if Sai actually was a common name or not, but somehow, looking at what kind of names people seemed to have in the Heian period, it kind of stands out. I know there were at least a Tachibana no Sai and Minamoto no Sai… though their names were written with different kanji.

You know, the sunset. I checked, and in mid-July, sun sets in Tokyo around 18:57. I was hoping for later, as then Sai could have appeared after sunset. (Where I live, it sets on the same day at 22:28. That would have been a good time.) But, this led me to think about random things… You know all these mythological creatures that have one form in daytime and another in night. So what if we're, say, so high up in the north that the sun doesn't set at all in the summer? Will it always be in the day form? And the opposite in winter… Somehow all these stories seem to always take place somewhere where day and night are of the same length.

…and now I've got a plot bunny. Someone shoot it... it might keep me from writing fanfics. xD


	3. Third Night

Here you are, the last chapter! A big thank you for all the readers and even bigger for the reviewers.

* * *

**Third Night**

The dinner at Hikaru's grandparents' was quieter than usually, but still pleasant. Masao wasn't there. Mitsuko had been quite right about the way his parents would react, though she would have been happy to ignore the matter. As the day passed, she found herself defending her husband.

"It's hardly his fault that the meeting was delayed," she said as they were moving to the desserts. "And in international business, it can't be helped that at times the meetings take place over what is a holiday in one country."

"Be that how it may, he _could_ have skipped it," Heihachi snorted. "But at least you two came here today. We'd been looking forward to this dinner, it would have been a shame if we'd had to eat it alone."

Mitsuko nodded and glanced at Hikaru. Part of the reason for the dinner being unusually quiet was that he was still a little sick, quite tired, and so not quite his usual boisterous self.

"How are you feeling, Hikaru?" she asked. "Should we head straight home after dinner?"

He looked up, sniffling his nose quite loudly. "Nah, I'm okay. And I got to play at least one game with gramps before we go, or he'll be whining about it the rest of the year."

Heihachi gave another of his snorts. "Whining? Hah. But if you feel you're up to it, by all means. Though I can't help feeling I have an unfair advantage–"

"As if you'd win just cause I'm a bit sick," Hikaru cut him off. "Dream on, old man."

"That's it." Heihachi dropped his dessert spoon on the table with a clank. "Ready for the game, boy?"

Hikaru grinned at him. "Ready to crush you!"

The two left for the game and left to women to clean the table. "I'll help you with the dishes," Mitsuko offered, as she always did, and just as customarily Tamae, Hikaru's grandmother, strongly declined. They still didn't have a dishwasher, though Masao had been talking about getting one for them for Christmas. Mitsuko wondered if they'd be happy about it or not, but was cautiously optimistic. Most likely they would come around with time.

"Say," she said conversationally as she carried dirty plates to the sink, "I was wondering if I could take a look at your attic? I have always loved old things, and I was wondering if you have there something lovely for which you've got no use. Unless you have some secrets hidden there," she added lightly.

"Oh, if you want to, certainly," Hikaru's grandmother said, and if she was at all surprised at this sudden request and her newly found love of old things, she hid it well. "I'm not sure if we have anything that would spark your interest – though who knows, I barely remember what I have in my closets, so who knows what is hidden in the attic." The women shared a laugh. "I have actually been thinking about going everything through there and throwing away some useless junk, so we could very well get started now. The boys will spend a while with their game."

Mitsuko nodded, hiding her smile at how she called her husband a boy.

In the attic it didn't take long for her to spot the go board – which of course was her real reason to go there. She didn't go straight to it, though, first inspecting a couple of closets full of old clothes and linens together with Tamae. Then, pretending she had just noticed the board, she knelt down beside it.

To her eyes there was nothing special about the board. She ran her finger over it, feeling the polished surface of the wood and trying to catch some kind of an otherworldly vibe, but in vain. It was nothing but an ordinary go board, if quite old.

"Now, that would be something for Hikaru," Tamae said behind her back, and she smiled a little crookedly, so that the old woman didn't see it.

"I don't know, he doesn't really care about old things. Everything has to be brand new."

"Hmm." Tamae had turned to a big wooden chest and was peeking into it. "My sister was a similar case. No appreciation for anything old. Quite a lot of what we have here is something she'd deemed to be old junk, ready to be thrown away. And all thing's considered…" she paused for a while, taking in the contents of the chest, "she was probably right." She slammed it shut again. "Seen anything you like?"

Her eyes still on the go board Mitsuko stood slowly up. "I don't know." Disappointed she turned away from the board. She didn't really know what she had been expecting, but she had thought that there would have to be _something_ in the board out of ordinary.

Well, at least there was a go board in the attic. She didn't really know what she'd have thought if there hadn't been any.

They spent a long while going through the attic, and in the end to her surprise she actually did find something she was happy to take – an old hand-woven rug and a beautiful tea cup in a box full of old dishes. When they returned to the house, the game was just about to end

"How is it going?" Mitsuko asked, and her son grinned at her.

"What'd you think? Though grandpa did put up a proper fight."

The old man was staring at the board, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Then he shook his head. "He's grown stronger," he said to Mitsuko. "I can't help but wonder…" He left the sentence hanging.

_Can't help but wonder if he truly will become pro, _Mitsuko finished in her mind. "We were exploring your attic," she said instead. "You really have quite a lot of interesting things there. Hikaru, did you know there's an old go board up there?"

Hikaru made a noncommittal sound, but she couldn't help noticing how his shoulders momentarily stiffened.

"Certainly he does!" Heihachi said. "He even asked once if he could get it."

"Oh? Hikaru, it's clearly an antique. You shouldn't ask for such expensive things."

"Well, maybe one day, if you really will turn professional," Heihachi said, beginning to clean the board. "It's something I inherited from my brother. Supposed to be haunted."

Mitsuko drew a sharp breath and tried to cover it with coughing. "Haunted? How is that?"

"They say that a spirit wearing that tall nobleman's hat comes out of it. I don't know about that – never seen it myself."

"A ghost with an eboshi hat?" Mitsuko laughed a little and hoped it sounded natural. Her heart was thumping. That settled it. It was all real. She had been convinced about it last night, but somehow in the bright sun it had felt too impossible, too insane for her to truly believe it. But this… this couldn't be a coincidence. "I wonder why there'd be a ghost in a go board," she went on. "Must be an avid go player, don't you think?"

Heihachi laughed. "Certainly. Wouldn't that be interesting, to play against a ghost from the past? What do you think, Hikaru? Would this ghost be a great player?"

The boy snorted. "Who knows. Maybe it'd be the opposite – some poor sod who never learned to play and is still trying to grasp the basics." Mitsuko watched him intently as he spoke, and there was something in the way he avoided looking into anyone, something in his grumpy tone, that from the experience acquired through years told her he was hiding something.

His grandfather noticed nothing. "Hmm. Perhaps. Do you want to play another game?"

Hikaru shook his head, and Heihachi put the go board away.

They didn't talk more about the go board and its supposed ghost that day. Quite soon after, Mitsuko and Hikaru headed straight home. Tourou nagashi, the floating lanterns had always been her favorite part of the festival, but this year they would skip it. Hikaru had complained of being tired, and as she had this perhaps irrational fear that the lanterns truly would guide all the spirits away, she didn't mind missing it.

Back at home, Hikaru retreated to his bed together with a big bunch of manga. After a while as she peeked in she saw he had fallen asleep and was happy she had made him to brush his teeth and change clothes before lying down. She quietly collected all the manga from his bed and turned off the lights.

In the kitchen she made herself some tea, drinking it from the cup she had just got, and wondered. Now the Bon was ending. Would the ghost – would Sai still appear? And if he did, who would come first, the ghost or her husband? She knew that Masao was already on his way home, and unless there were some delays, he would probably arrive around the same time the ghost had usually appeared.

She stared at her tea, an unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach. What if Masao would run across Sai? She wasn't sure what he'd do – certainly he wouldn't believe any ghost stories. But surely he'd have to believe what he saw? She remembered how hard it had been for her to come to accept this as true. Masao would, without doubt, be even more stubborn. But if he did believe… how would he react? _He _would certainly call an exorcist first thing in the morning… if he'd wait that long.

She stood up suddenly. Forgetting her tea, she tiptoed to Hikaru's room, and, seeing him fast asleep, whispered quietly, "Sai? My husband's coming home tonight. Please don't let him see you. He might want to check on Hikaru when he comes, so… so hide in the closet or something, okay?"

Retreating from the room she felt a little silly. She couldn't help feeling she had been talking to an empty room – and even if he was there, surely he didn't need her to tell him to stay out of sight. Well, better safe than sorry. She returned to the kitchen, found her tea cup again, and settled down to wait.

It was the front door that opened first. She heard a thump as Masao dropped down his bag, and stood up.

"Welcome home," she said, walking to the hall. She was surprised to see him just standing there, coat still on. He smiled at her – a little apologetic smile she knew well. The door was open behind him, and she could see a taxi waiting on the street.

"It's good to see you again," he said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. "How's Hikaru?"

"Sleeping. He's getting better."

"Good. Listen…" He glanced over his shoulder at the waiting car. "We did nail this contract, but it was quite a lot of work. We're going to have some drinks… boss'll be there too. I just wanted to drop my things here and wish you a good night first."

"Good night, then. Have a good time, I'm sure you've earned it." Leaning against the wall she watched as he nodded and closed the door behind his back. She bent to pick up his bag, feeling an odd combination of relief and guilt. At least for now, the danger had been dodged. Turning her back to the door she was about to start carrying the bag to their room, but came to a sudden stop.

Sai stood there at the end of the stairway, watching the closed door with a disapproving look.

She sighed and walked by him. "Don't look like that. You just don't understand, it's…"

"You're right, I don't understand this modern world _at all_. One would imagine that when a man returns home he would want to spend the night with his family, not with friends, drinking."

"I don't think he really wanted to go," Mitsuko said with a sigh as she opened the bag and started to sort out the contents. "Masao doesn't care much about those things – but if everyone else goes, he too has to."

She put unused shirts and pants into the closet and picked up the laundry. As she was carrying it to the laundry basket, she looked over her shoulder at the ghost still tailing her with a frown on his face, and gave him a little smile.

"I'm happy you're here," she said and paused. "And that he's not…" she then admitted. "That probably makes me a rather bad wife. But the truth is… that I don't really care."

She stuffed the laundry into the basket, and turned back to him. "Do you think you'll still be here next night?"

"Probably not," he said. "The Obon is ending, I can feel it. It's… a very peculiar sensation. I don't remember reacting to it this strongly before. The past Obon festivals went by so that I didn't even notice. I don't know what makes this one different."

They had come to the living room and sat down, both of them on the floor, he in seiza, she crosslegged.

"I'm glad that we could still spend some time together, then," Mitsuko said. "This might be the last time we can meet like this." The idea was overwhelmingly sad, and she had to pause for a moment. "But you'll still be there, won't you? With Hikaru?"

"I will." Sai smiled at her. "Maybe we should tell him, in the end. Through him we could talk again."

"Yes." She sighed. "I don't know why I don't want to tell him. Maybe it's just that I too want to have a secret of my own…"

"We don't have to tell him," Sai said with a little laugh. "We can wait to the next Obon and see if this happens again, and if it doesn't, then… maybe. But, say…" He looked around in the room and his eyes stopped on a family photo in the bookshelf. "I saw plenty of these, these _photo-graphs_ at Hikaru's grandparents' home. Do you have more here? It's such a fascinating thing, how they capture people's essence. I think they had one there that had Hikaru as a little child…"

"I have plenty of photos, if that's what you want to see." She went to the bookshelf on her knees and opened a drawer. "I made some albums for Hikaru, would you like to see those?"

"Do you have any about your life?" Sai asked, sounding perhaps a little shy, and she shot him a surprised look.

"Of course." She grasped an older album, one she had inherited from her parents. They hadn't had such an awful lot of photos, so there was only one album, but it held everything that was important.

She settled down again with the album on the floor in front of her, and opened the first page. "Here. Can you guess who these are?"

He looked at the picture with a concentrated frown on his face, but shook then his head. "The woman looks a little like you, though."

"She's my mother. And this," she pointed at the baby the woman was holding, "is me. And that's my father."

Sai stared at the picture with wide eyes, and she couldn't help but laugh at his expression. "This is me too, with my brother," she said, turning the page to show a toddler with a little older boy.

Sai watched the pictures quietly, and she kept on turning the pages, telling him about the events and people in them. It had been so long since she had been watching these photos, she had almost forgotten about some of them.

"There I am with my uncle on his motorbike. He wanted to take me on a ride, but mother said I was too young. _Now_ I can understand her, but then I thought she was the unfairest."

Sai said nothing, and a moment she wondered if he was even listening to her. To her, this picture was one of the saddest in the album – a few years later her uncle had lost his life crashing with that very same motorbike. Her mother had been right to forbid her…

"But he would have been more careful if I were with him," she muttered, and Sai looked up at her.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?"

"No, nothing," she said with a start and turned the page. There she was with her friends, on the last day of elementary school. These days she kept in touch with only one of them anymore, occasionally going to a café or some art event. She wondered how the others were doing, how life had treated them. Did Yukiko really become a doctor like she had dreamed?

"Does it make you sad, to watch these pictures?" Sai asked softly, and she realized he was watching her and not the photos.

"No… just a little… melancholy, maybe?" She looked at the happily laughing girl in the photographs, and smiled a little sadly. "Look at her, she's all set, ready to enter the junior high, excited about the new world it will be… without any idea what life will bring to her. Not that she'd worry about such things."

She hadn't had any particular dreams when she was a child. When people asked her what she wanted to be when she was grown up, she'd usually said she wanted to be a vet, just to say something. She had actually considered it at one point – she had always liked animals – but had soon decided that most likely she didn't have what it took. For one thing, blood made her queasy.

And so she had ended up taking the easy path, marrying young her first boyfriend, and becoming a housewife. It wasn't a bad life, but sometimes she wondered what else she could have been.

"You were very cute as a child," Sai said suddenly, his eyes again on the photos. "Of course, you still are."

Mitsuko gave a sudden, embarrassed laugh, covering her mouth with her hand.

He gave her a surprised look. "What?"

"What do you mean 'what'?" She was probably still blushing a little. "Did you just call me cute?"

"But you are, Mitsuko-san! Especially when you smile. You still have that same dimple you've got in these pictures. It's… cute."

She was sure he had to be teasing her. He just seemed so very serious and earnest that she didn't know what to make of it. So she turned the page.

As they went on watching the pictures, Mitsuko realized she was suddenly painfully aware of herself, of the way she spoke, gestured, how she sat so very close to this ghost that didn't, at the moment, feel like an ethereal entity at all. And after all, they were able to touch, weren't they?

Suddenly she was feeling very hot, her thoughts returning to that quick kiss of the first night. Why, she wondered, had they been able to touch when he couldn't touch anything else? Maybe he was able to touch other people, too. It couldn't have been just her, could it? And whether or not it was, they _could_ touch, and…

"This is the last photo of my cat, Miyu," she said maybe a little too loudly, and her voice sounded strange to her ears. "She disappeared shortly after."

"A beautiful cat," Sai said, oblivious to her discomfort. He stopped to watch the picture for quite a long time. "We had cats too, back in the Heian age. My mother had one that looked a little like this one. I had all but forgotten about it… I can't even remember what it was called." He shook his head. "These photos really are a magnificent thing. Such an aid to memory! I… is it a wonder I'm forgetting my mother's cat's name, if her _face_ is growing misty in my memory?"

Without thinking Mitsuko reached out her hand, placing it consolingly on his hand. "You might forget her face, but surely you won't forget her," she said gently. Only then she seemed to realize she was touching him, and how warm his hand was under hers, and she drew quickly back.

"Yes." He smiled at her, and she couldn't but wonder that if _she_ was cute when she smiled, what word should she possibly use of him. As she said nothing, he turned back to the album. "A very beautiful cat," he repeated. "Have you ever considered getting a new one?"

"Yes," she said, "but Masao is allergic."

"Allergic? Yes, I have heard of that. Hikaru has a classmate who is allergic to birch. It makes him sneeze. I think I had a cousin who was allergic too. He was sneezing all the time in the summer, and his eyes were all read. A few times they tried to drive evil spirits from him, but it never succeeded."

"Poor guy," Mitsuko said, but couldn't help laughing a little. "As if having allergies wouldn't have been bad enough."

"Hmm?" Sai was already watching the photos on the next page, random sceneries of a summer vacation in Hokkaido. "Well, I was once gravely ill when I was a child. The exorcism was a strange experience, I admit. But it worked." He turned the next page. "So it was certainly worth trying, also in my cousin's case."

"Are you sure it was the exor…" Mitsuko started to ask with a skeptical smile, but stopped mid-sentence. Only then did they both realize what Sai had just done.

A moment they sat in silence, staring at the album.

"I…" Sai breathed.

"Did you just turn the page?" Mitsuko whispered.

"I," Sai repeated. Gingerly he took a hold of the page again and turned it back and forth, back and forth. "I was thinking that… that my legs are falling asleep, and… and that's pretty strange…"

He started to stand up, cautiously, taking a hold of Mitsuko's shoulder for support. His grip was quite firm. Back on his feet he leaned against the wall, thumped it with his fist. "Oh god," he whispered. "Can it really be…"

He turned to Mitsuko who was still sitting on the floor, staring at him with her mouth a little open. "I… I am corporeal. I can touch. _I can touch_." His eyes were ablaze when they met Mitsuko's gaze. "Do you know what this means?"

A blush spread across her face, and she felt herself stiffen a little, anxious. "I…" she breathed, but didn't get farther than that.

"I can play go!" Sai exclaimed joyously. After a moment of stunned silence, she burst into laughter.

"It is not a laughing matter," Sai said indignantly. "Please, Mitsuko-san, I know you said you don't play go, but… wouldn't you play a little with me?"

"How could I decline?" she said, still chuckling a little. "Wait here, I go to get the go board."

She headed upstairs shaking her head with a smile still on her lips. All things considered, if someone truly turned into a ghost just because he wanted to play a board game, she most likely shouldn't have been surprised if the first thing he wanted to do after gaining a physical body was to play the said game – no matter how long time had passed. She entered quietly Hikaru's room. Hikaru was fast asleep, and given what a sound sleeper he was, it was unlikely he would wake up easily. Still she did her best to make no noise as she placed the stone bowls on the board and carried everything downstairs.

"Alright, here we go," she said, placing them down. She sat down by the board and took one of the bowls. "Black," she said, looking into it. "I'm supposed to have black, right? How will we play? Will I have a handicap?"

Sai said nothing, and she looked up at him expectantly. He was standing on the other side of the go board, his face half-hidden behind his fan, eyes closed.

"Sai?" she asked. "Are you okay?"

He drew a ragged breath, but remained silent. Mitsuko watched quietly as he lowered his fan and sat down. As he reached over the board to take the other bowl and opened it, gently pushing his fingers into the stones, she thought he might burst into tears. He held them back, though, and pulled his hand out with a stone between his fingers.

"Let's play an even game," he said, his voice a little hoarse. "There won't be much point in handicap stones, no matter how many you'd use. You do know how go is played?"

"Basically," Mitsuko said. "I did play a little with my father when I was a child. I lost my interest around the time I was old enough to realize he was letting me win. I didn't have the patience to really try to learn it."

"Let's start, then." He smiled at her, something still glistening in the corner of his eye. "Don't worry about it," he said as Mitsuko hesitated. "Just relax and play – I am simply happy to hold a go stone in my hand."

Mitsuko nodded, but didn't start yet. "I could go to wake Hikaru," she offered. "You could play a proper game with him."

Now it was Sai's turn to hesitate, but only for a moment. "No. I'll rather play with you." He bowed a little. "Onegaishimasu."

"Onegaishimasu," Mitsuko replied automatically, and placed her stone down.

Sai fingered the stone in his hand, eyes on the board, and took his time to play his opening move. Mitsuko watched him as he watched the board. His face was impassive, unreadable, more so than she had ever seen before – there had always seemed to be some emotion flickering over his face. But when he finally did snap the stone down, right on the upper left star point, he looked up, and Mitsuko realized he wasn't quite as blank as she had thought.

A moment she met his gaze, and found herself happy that this wasn't a serious game. She couldn't imagine what it would feel like to see such a look in your opponents eyes when the game was just starting – or was this normal for go players? Briefly she wondered what Hikaru looked like when playing his games, and she realized she had never seen her son playing. Then Sai smiled a little, the intense look in his eyes softening slightly, and with a little laugh Mitsuko played on.

"I hope you understand I truly don't have a clue what I'm doing," she said. "I do remember the rules, I think – about the eyes, and the ko rule… but other than that…"

"I told you not to worry about it," Sai cut her off gently. "I'll guide you."

And he did. Half of the time she didn't even notice it, the way he subtly led her moves through his own. Sometimes he stopped to explain something, to show different variations of how the game could proceed, but overall they didn't speak much, as Sai's policy seemed to be show, not tell – or even more preferably, make Mitsuko find the right way herself. Gradually she found herself submerging into the game, growing more focused on it than on her opponent. In the quiet of the night, she listened to the soft sounds the go stones made as they snapped against the wooden board, and something was stirring inside of her, a feeling akin to wonder, and for a moment she thought she could understand how this game had such a deep hold on Sai's very soul that he would still cling to it even after a thousand years.

She heaved a deep sigh once their game was over. "Thank you for the game," she said quietly, and truly meant it. "It was... quite an experience. Not at all what I thought it would be. I'm just sorry that I can't offer you a proper game..."

Sai was shaking his head. "I enjoy teaching," he said. "And you are a lovely student. If you truly haven't played since your childhood, I would say you have some skill."

"I don't know about that," Mitsuko said laughing a little, "but it was surprisingly fun. Maybe I should ask Hikaru to teach me... though I'm not sure what he'd think about it, he might find it annoying..."

"Perhaps," Sai admitted. "But I am sure that as he grows up and matures, he would appreciate it if his parents showed interest in what is important to him. And as long as I am with him, I would be happy to teach you through him."

They looked at each other, sharing a smile over the go board. "Do you want to play more?" Mitsuko asked.

Sai looked down at the board, then, slowly, up at her, and there was something new in his eyes. Before Mitsuko had time to figure it out, he in his turn leaned over the board to place a kiss on her mouth.

"No," he muttered when he finally draw back a little. "I don't want to... play go... right now." His hand was warm on her arm, and she could swear she felt his breath against her neck, and in that instant all the feelings he had ever awoken in her were back. Now she did not hesitate or feel shy, but pushed the go board out of the way and leaned against him, finally burying her hands into his hair – hair that was even silkier than she had imagined.

"Good," she whispered. "Neither do I."

...

In the small hours of the night they lay together on the sofa, Mitsuko's head resting on Sai's shoulder, her fingers intertwined with his, and they were both quiet. She didn't feel like talking, for there was nothing to say, and she was happy he seemed to share her sentiment. What they had right then could not last, she knew that with a grim certainty, and that made it all even more precious. She listened to her breathing, and felt the steady rise and fall of his chest under her hand, and she held onto that, banishing all thoughts from her mind.

They had stayed in the living room for somehow she did not feel comfortable taking him to her marriage bed, and in the end she was glad about it. Masao had come home at some point, and she had listened to the noises he made surprisingly calmly. She could hear he was drunk, very drunk, probably – he didn't have a good head for alcohol. She listened how he stumbled to their bedroom and wondered if he ever noticed she wasn't in the bed – if he even made it all the way to the bed. She knew she should have felt something about the situation, guilt and shame, and maybe she would, later, but right then she didn't care. Briefly she wondered what Sai thought of it all – though if even half the happenings she remembered from _The Tale of Genji_ were realistic, this probably didn't offend his Heian age sensibilities too badly.

Still they were quiet, holding onto each other, but she could feel him change – he didn't really grow colder, but somehow the warmth next to her slowly dissipated, his hand in hers lost some of its substance, and when she turned her head a little to look at him, she could see, dimly, through him. He looked at her, too, meeting her gaze, smiled a little, but only when the first sun rays slipped into the room she could hear him whisper a quiet thank you.

"Thank _you_," she whispered too, but he had already disappeared. She closed her eyes with a soft sigh, lying there unmoving, for she knew he was still there even if she could not see him.

**THE END**

* * *

Well, yes. That's it. Thanks for reading!

Do we know Hikaru's grandma's name? Is she still alive in the first place?

Btw, I just realized that though I've never cared much for that Sai-turns-real cliché, now I've written two fics in which (something like) that happens. Funny.


	4. Epilogue

Okay, I just had to write this tiny epilogue. You see, something struck me, about the timing, and… I couldn't resist.

* * *

**Epilogue**

It was once again time for the Obon, and she was waiting alone in the living room.

The past year had seen great changes in her life. Or, in fact, just one change, but it was the greatest of all – a new life had been born.

Masao had been so surprised when she had told him she was pregnant it had almost been funny, and even more surprised he was when she insisted on keeping the baby. He had muttered something about them being too old for a new child – well, _she_ wasn't. Truly, these days there were women who had their first baby at her age. Hikaru had said nothing, just given her growing stomach strange looks.

Now that she held her daughter, her perfect, beautiful daughter with soft downy hair, tiny fists clenching tightly round her finger, bright lavender eyes looking curiously at the world, she couldn't have been happier.

The baby had been born in the spring, on Children's Day. Hikaru had been behaving so very strangely back then, she didn't really know what had been going on with him. He had disappeared for a while, went to Innoshima of all places – and when he had come back to see his new baby sister, the look on his face had been so lost and confused that for a moment she forgot all about the baby and just hugged him.

When she had told him they'd name the child Sai – unless he had something against it – he had looked like he was ready to faint. She had almost told him the truth then, but decided not to. He had his secrets, why couldn't she have hers? And if Sai hadn't told him, she wouldn't, either.

And now, it was again time for the Obon, and she was waiting, alone.

**THE END (for real)**

* * *

Alright, a random piece of trivia that has absolutely nothing to do with the fic, but I happened to come across an Egyptian deity called Sai, and this… amuses me (from wiki):

Shai (also spelt Sai, occasionally Shay, and in Greek, Psais) was the deification of the concept of fate in Egyptian mythology. As a concept, with no particular reason for associating one gender over another,_ Shai was sometimes considered female, rather than the more usual understanding of being male_…

Male, female, hard to tell with a Sai of any kind, apparently…


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